Book launch and professorship Anna Harris: The Matter of Hospitals

Anna Harris sheds light on the hidden life of hospitals in new book

Hospitals are often seen through the lens of urgency, care, and crisis – but what about the materials that make them work? A new book, The Matter of Hospitals, edited by Anna Harris, newly appointed Professor of Anthropology and Medicine at Maastricht University, explores this question in imaginative and deeply insightful ways. From bedsheets to x-rays, the book reveals how seemingly mundane objects shape hospital life around the world.

The launch event on 7 November 2025 from 15:30-17:00 at Boekhandel De Tribune will bring together the university, hospital, and local community for a presentation by the editor, a Q&A session, and opening words from UM President Rianne Letschert. The book will be available open access via Maastricht University Press from the same date.

The book is a major output of The Upcycled Clinic, a Horizon Europe research project exploring creative and sustainable responses to material shortages and wastefulness in healthcare.

The accompanying publication includes the inaugural lecture (below) and 26 essays from leading hospital thinkers and practitioners worldwide.

Inaugural lecture: The Matter of Hospitals: An Ethnographer Investigates

The launch coincides with Professor Harris’s inaugural lecture on 24 October from 16:30 onwards at Minderbroedersberg 4-6. “The Matter of Hospitals: An Ethnographer Investigates” explores what the social sciences and medicine share – the arts of observation, examination, and investigation. Using three everyday clinical objects as “idea trampolines,” Harris outlines new directions for her Chair in Anthropology and Medicine and invites the public to join as co-investigators in thinking about the material worlds of healthcare.